(no subject)
The April 16, 2007 Nor'Easter is going to be remembered as one of the most devastating storms in recent decades. Marissa woke me up on Monday morning to make sure that I was still alive. Since I was already awake, I headed upstairs to paint Adrienne's Christmas 06 present in the dark with her and Trunk. A few hours later, Mariss and I braved the storm and headed over to see what the caf would be serving for lunch. I shouldn't have even bothered. It was baked beans and franks, with some delicious canned pudding for desert. After lunch, Marissa was supposed to be giving a campus tour to the Community Coordinator candidates who had been flown in for interviews. We waited for a while, then decided to head down to the river when they didn't show. Half of UNE's dock had been ripped away by the wind and waves. A forty-foot boat had been smashed into the rocks, leaving several holes in its hull. We could barely look out over the river for a second before the wind became unbearable and we had to turn away. The waves were the biggest I have ever seen on a river. The power still out, I grabbed my car and headed down Hills Beach. Half of the beach was on the other side of the road, thrown there by waves and wind. Some houses were flooded up to their front doors. I heard later from friends who live on Fortunes that the destruction was even worse over there. The water had climbed all the way across the dunes to reach many houses. Thousand pound boulders were pulled from the storm wall and placed neatly in the middle of the road. Sand was carried away from the beach, causing the equivalent of decades of erosion in one day. One of UNE's security officers who lived at Pine Point said he was completely surrounded on all sides by flood waters. He couldn't have evacuated his house except by boat. He and his family sat at the window and watched as trees fell on houses and crushed cars.
The story that has devastated me the most, for whatever reason, was one I read in Tuesday's Portland Press Herald.
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Despite valiant effort, two die in floodwaters:
George Eliason dives into Lebanon's Little River, but can't quite reach a girl, 4, and her grandmother, 50.
"...'He was swimming and yelling at me to turn around and go back, and I felt the current was just taking me right down,' she said. 'I could see that woman's head...and the child.'
'George finally got out of the water. He was on like a branch. All I heard the whole time was 'Hold on! You're going to make it. He lost his voice screaming,' his wife said.
She could also hear Dube.
'She was screaming and then after a while, she wasn't screaming any more and you couldn't hear any more...'
...[Rescue workers] were able to recover the child, giving her CPR even as they tried to get her into the boat.
They were taken to Goodall Hospital in Sanford, where the girl and her grandmother were pronounced dead, and Eliason was treated for hypothermia."
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I wanted to cry after I finished reading.
The story that has devastated me the most, for whatever reason, was one I read in Tuesday's Portland Press Herald.
---
Despite valiant effort, two die in floodwaters:
George Eliason dives into Lebanon's Little River, but can't quite reach a girl, 4, and her grandmother, 50.
"...'He was swimming and yelling at me to turn around and go back, and I felt the current was just taking me right down,' she said. 'I could see that woman's head...and the child.'
'George finally got out of the water. He was on like a branch. All I heard the whole time was 'Hold on! You're going to make it. He lost his voice screaming,' his wife said.
She could also hear Dube.
'She was screaming and then after a while, she wasn't screaming any more and you couldn't hear any more...'
...[Rescue workers] were able to recover the child, giving her CPR even as they tried to get her into the boat.
They were taken to Goodall Hospital in Sanford, where the girl and her grandmother were pronounced dead, and Eliason was treated for hypothermia."
---
I wanted to cry after I finished reading.